relatively irrelevant

540 MB hard drives

It was nice having all 23 of us back together for training this past week. We all had much to share with each other for we just switched host families on Sunday, July 14, and were visiting other volunteers the previous week. In general, many of us had a great volunteer visit but were having some anxiety for switching to new host families and neighborhoods.

On Tuesday, July 16, the six information technology volunteers spent their morning at Central High School in Georgetown. This was our second visit and last to work on the computers in their computer lab. They had six Pentium machines, some of which had only 540 MB hard drives. The lab had no network or Internet access, so much of our efforts were spent cleaning up software, reinstalling the OS, and swapping out some RAM between machines. We also brought two 286s back to life by pulling spare parts from various other machines that were stacked up as junk in the far corner. It was some great hands-on hardware experience. I feel quite comfortable taking apart a computer and putting it back together now.

The latter part of the week we had agriculture lessons. Much of it was for large-scale farming purposes, so I didn’t find much of the information useful. But it was good for me to get a few blisters working out in a field.

It is rumored that we all learn what we will be doing and where we will be stationed on Wednesday. I can’t tell you how relieved most of us will feel once we finally learn what we will be doing and exactly where we will be living.

Lastly, I wanted to share a few of my favorite photos. The first one is a photo of us visiting Baracara Resort on the Essiquibo river. The second photo is me taking a shower. This photo is indicative of how dirty most Guyanese get each day and how they bathe. Just kidding. I got this muddy playing ultimate Frisbee one Sunday afternoon. And the third photo is me relaxing in a hammock after a hard day of training. It’s tough being a volunteer.